Re-evaluating the 2008 NHL Entry Draft
The top-end of the 2012 NHL Entry Draft is shaping up to be loaded with defensemen. According to the ISS, six of the top 10 prospects are defensemen, which leads many to wonder whether this year’s draft class can match the 2008 version, regarded as one of the all-time deepest for defensemen.
Steven Stamkos was the consensus No. 1 pick that year—and multiple 50-goal seasons suggests this was a good decision—but after him, scouts recognized a select group of NHL-ready defensemen that would certainly go within the top five. Get a top five pick that summer and you were almost guaranteed an anchor on the blue line for years to come.
Los Angeles selected Drew Doughty second overall, which was followed by Atlanta taking Zach Bogosian, St. Louis choosing Alex Pietrangelo and Toronto trading up to pick Luke Schenn fifth.
As time has passed it’s become clear the draft was even deeper than originally imagined. In fact, some very talented defensemen were not lottery picks. Tyler Myers, the mini Zdeno Chara (yet still a giant), went 12th to Buffalo, the swift-skating Erik Karlsson went 15th to Ottawa, Jake Gardiner, now playing for Toronto, was selected 17th by Anaheim, Michael Del Zotto was the 20th pick, taken by the New York Rangers, and Washington took John Carlson with the 27th-overall selection.
Many of these players are already playing on the top pair for their respective teams and all have bright futures ahead of them. However, three players from the 2008 draft class have separated themselves from their peers and emerged as elite defenders: Doughty, Pietrangleo and Karlsson.
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Doughty was the first of the three to crack the NHL, making the leap straight from junior as an 18 year old. Doughty didn’t set the league on fire during his rookie season, but a 59-point sophomore campaign, highlighted by a trip to the Olympics and a Norris nomination, cemented Doughty’s name among the NHL’s elite.
Although Doughty is now the unquestioned No. 1 defenseman on the Kings, with the salary to match and the task of shutting down the opposition’s best players to go along with it, his offensive game has suffered. Doughty’s point total has declined each of the past two seasons and he only managed 36 points on the year.
His minus-two rating this season is a little misleading as he is still formidable defensively. Doughty was on the ice for only 1.96 goals against per 60 minutes. As a comparison, the defenseman with the best plus/minus, Zdeno Chara, was on the ice for 2.33 goals against per 60 minutes, but the Bruins scored 75 more goals than the Kings, which causes the massive discrepancy in plus/minus.
Regardless that Doughty is still good defensively, he is being paid elite dollars and that price tag comes with expectations to get the job done in the offensive zone as well. Instead of building off his breakout sophomore season, Doughty has regressed offensively. Certainly some of this can be attributable to an anemic LA offense, and missing training camp after holding out for a major deal certainly hasn’t helped, but Doughty has yet to live up to his salary.
This is why despite Doughty’s early success; both Pietrangelo and Karlsson have surpassed him.
Karlsson’s breakout 78-point season contained shades of vintage Mike Green, except Karlsson was better defensively than the oft-injured Capital. He led all defensemen in takeaways and played against harder competition, while starting more in the defensive end, than Green did in his Norris-nominated year.
Karlsson is a finalist for the Norris Trophy this season, based mainly on the strength of remarkable offensive numbers like Green had in 2009. Karlsson basically lapped the competition, scoring 25 more points than the next highest defenseman. In both of Green’s 70+ point seasons he was never more than 10 points higher than the next player, so Karlsson might have a better chance of winning than Green.
Like Doughty, Karlsson is also up for a new contract after his star-making season in which owner Eugene Melnyk predicted the 21-year-old would “go down in history as one of the greatest defensemen of all-time.” A big contract in the $7 million range will likely force the Senators to give Karlsson more defensive responsibilities which, if he can handle them, will truly see him leap-frog over Doughty.
Surprisingly, despite Karlsson’s offensive wizardry, of the three defensemen, it is actually Pietrangelo that has amassed the most points over his first two seasons in the league with 94. That’s six more than Doughty and 22 more than Karlsson did in their first two seasons.
Pietrangelo was sent back to junior for his first two seasons after being drafted and hasn’t had a major blow-you-away, breakout year like Karlsson did this season or Doughty did in 2009-10. However, he has quietly become one of the league’s premier two-way defensemen. He is one of only five since the lockout to break 50-points in their second full season and he was only on the ice for 1.69 goals against per 60 minutes this year, even more impressive considering he plays in all situations.
What also separates Pietrangelo from the other two defensemen is his penalty killing ability. Pietrangelo was on the first line of the league’s seventh-ranked penalty killing unit, and among those that spent the most time short-handed, only seven players were on the ice for fewer goals against per 60 minutes.
In comparison, Doughty plays fewer minutes on the Kings’ second penalty kill unit, ranked fourth in the league, and Karlsson doesn’t even get a sniff at ice time short-handed. Although when you score as much as Karlsson does, killing penalties is not really a productive use of time.
If teams got a redo at the 2008 draft, it is clear that after Stamkos the three following picks would be Doughty, Pietrangelo and Karlsson in some order. At this point, Karlsson dropping as far as 15th looks like an absolute steal and even the Thrashers passing on Pietrangelo in favor of Bogosian has turned out to be quite fortuitous for the Blues.
Whether the Kings would choose to leave Doughty’s name off the draft board at No. 2, however, is unclear. Neither Pietrangelo nor Karlsson have played at a higher level than Doughty did at the 2010 Olympics, when the Kings’ defenseman was one of the best players in the entire tournament. However, Doughty himself has not played at that level since leaving Vancouver with a gold medal.
At just 22 years of age, there is still plenty of time for Doughty to rediscover the dominating game he showcased to the world. But if the other two rearguards continue to develop, the consistent and well-rounded game of Pietrangelo, plus the dynamic, offensive flair of Karlsson may mean Doughty has to settle being the third best defenseman from the loaded 2008 draft.
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